https://girdley.com/Ghost 0.11Thu, 17 Aug 2017 14:00:32 GMT60I think the press is something founders should leverage but work with it with their eye's open. This post is a few lessons about things I've learned the hard way about the press.

Press isn't a repeatable customer acquisition strategy. When we started Codeup, we could get on the news

I think the press is something founders should leverage but work with it with their eye's open. This post is a few lessons about things I've learned the hard way about the press.

Press isn't a repeatable customer acquisition strategy. When we started Codeup, we could get on the news any we wanted. After a spell, the outlets got tired of us, and press mentions get rarer when you aren't the exciting new thing.

Seed-stage startups should do their own PR. There are multiple opinions on this. I had one friend who bet much of his whole net-worth on a big New York PR firm. They got him a mention in the Wall Street Journal, and he never looked back. The point? I know thousands of start-ups. This is the only one where PR made a big difference. I prefer founders either avoid the press entirely or do their own PR.

Reporters don't do as much reporting these days. I'm sad to say it, but the vast majority of journalists are expected to crank out tons of content. One outlet I know requires their tech reporter to do 4-5 stories per day. That makes producing quality content near impossible in most conventional publications.

Don't make news unless it is good news. A few weeks ago, a CEO asked how to position a press release about the company raising prices. My response, "Why are you doing a release about bad news?" I think of what story I want to see. If my news isn't good, I keep it to myself.

Talking to reporters is your choice. At some point, every company will be asked to speak on a negative story. It is the company's choice to decide to be quoted or involved. If a story is beneficial for their aims, founders should talk. If not, there's nothing wrong with politely declining to be interviewed.

Learn your reporters. Some get things right. Some work with you. Some get things wrong. I know reporters that get so much wrong that keep everything in elementary school terms to minimize chances articles have factual errors. One national writer has a hit-rate less than 50%. So, I assume the opposite of his articles is true.

Numbers matter. Reporters don't have time these days to dig in and determine which stories are real and which are junk. I advise startups to almost always match their releases with transactions like fundraisings or big deals, which have dollar amounts and are more likely to get coverage.

]]>A friend sent me this Reddit AMA about some dudes starting YAMACYC ("yet another me-too accelerator copy of YCombinator").

I wrote back: "Secrets are stupid in start-ups."

While mine was a flippant answer, my point is that keeping your business idea a secret is the exact opposite approach a founder

A friend sent me this Reddit AMA about some dudes starting YAMACYC ("yet another me-too accelerator copy of YCombinator").

I wrote back: "Secrets are stupid in start-ups."

While mine was a flippant answer, my point is that keeping your business idea a secret is the exact opposite approach a founder should take. Instead, you should be telling everyone everything about your idea.

Why?

In startups, you want to learn as much about your market as quickly as possible. You want to launch your product as soon as possible. You want experts in the field to tell you what your blind spots are. You want to find out if anyone actually wants to buy your product. (Spoiler Alert: They usually don't.)

So, back to the Reddit AMA. While I applaud this guy for trying to build an accelerator, keeping it a secret is a wrong way to go about it. He's missing a great opportunity to get feedback on his idea and see if anyone actually cares. If they don't, he could save himself a lot of time and work on something else.

Oh, and can someone steal your idea if you tell people about it? The answer is "sure, but who cares?" If your idea could be copied and done better by someone else, it wasn't a good idea in the first place.

]]>When you blog on one of the other platforms like Medium, Facebook or LinkedIn, they own your distribution. The platform gets to decide how to use, who gets to see it and how to monetize it. In effect, who owns distribution owns the content. Posting to one of the big]]>https://girdley.com/why-blog-on-your-own-domain/ef74f090-736d-423b-8d59-c4462e5f44d9Tue, 15 Aug 2017 14:00:00 GMT

When you blog on one of the other platforms like Medium, Facebook or LinkedIn, they own your distribution. The platform gets to decide how to use, who gets to see it and how to monetize it. In effect, who owns distribution owns the content. Posting to one of the big social media platforms can get more readership but it's a deal with the devil.

I made the decision to blog on my own domain because I want to own the distribution of my content. I'll certainly share it with the social media outlets, but the content will stay solely mine.

There's a tradeoff, of course. As just another domain blogging, I'm at a disadvantage. That's fine since I this blog is a representation of me and the most important thing is for me to control my message.

]]>If you have a startup, come pitch me. I'll be in Austin this Friday and have a few hours between meetings.

Geekdom Fund does seed and second seed rounds into high-growth start-ups swinging for the fences. We invest in businesses where a tech innovation is at their core enabling rapid

If you have a startup, come pitch me. I'll be in Austin this Friday and have a few hours between meetings.

Geekdom Fund does seed and second seed rounds into high-growth start-ups swinging for the fences. We invest in businesses where a tech innovation is at their core enabling rapid growth. Our focus is usually B2B businesses.

When I graduated college, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Like most young people, I went to a college without an entrepreneurial culture. So, I didn't have people I wanted to partner with.

I thought the best way to become an entrepreneur was to go work at a Big Company. I'd learn stuff and meet some other Startup People with my mindset. I didn't find any future co-founders at Big Company. I just learned how to be a Big Company Person.

Big Company people are different than Startup People, who have a different outlook entirely. To a Big Company person, being an entrepreneur is risky. "How will you get paid? What if it goes badly?" To a Startup Person, having a job is risky. "You mean one person gets to decide if you make more money this year? They can fire you any time?"

What to do?

There is a better middle ground for young people who want to become founders. Go work for a startup. The data agrees.

]]>These are the five news sources that provide the highest bang for my buck in this game. Definitely interested in any suggestions y'all have in addition to this.

Axios Pro Rata (https://www.axios.com/). A similar approach to the Ticker but has Dan Primack doing it. He came from

]]>https://girdley.com/untitled/8c70853e-efb8-4fde-9a29-9c6b2d3ec769Fri, 11 Aug 2017 14:00:00 GMTThese are the five news sources that provide the highest bang for my buck in this game. Definitely interested in any suggestions y'all have in addition to this.

Axios Pro Rata (https://www.axios.com/). A similar approach to the Ticker but has Dan Primack doing it. He came from Fortune's Term Sheet and is very smart.

]]>Poker is a great game for business people. It requires players to think in probabilities rather than absolutes. You can make the right play in poker and lose some percentage of time because luck is involved. (This is a great primer on poker math.)

Poker is a great game for business people. It requires players to think in probabilities rather than absolutes. You can make the right play in poker and lose some percentage of time because luck is involved. (This is a great primer on poker math.)

Many new managers think about hiring in absolute terms. They use language like "Will this be a great team member?" Team members in the hiring process are asked to do the impossible and predict the future.

I view hiring with probability in mind. I ask, "What is the percentage likelihood this candidate is a great team member?" This kind of thinking accepts the idea that all hires could fail and that's OK.

Let's take two candidates.

Candidate "Jane": 60% of being an A-player. 40% of being a bust.

Candidate "Jim": 10% of being an A-player. 90% of being a B-player.

Jim is the safe choice but Jane offers the greater upside. Given A-players in some industries are 5x or 10x more productive than B-players, this risk on Jane can make sense if you need to build a really strong team.

Using this mindset, companies can hire employees who are riskier but have a higher potential to be A-players (i.e. Top 10% performers at their pay band) as long as you willing to quickly move out busts.

]]>Shanghai? LA? Berlin?

I think the next Silicon Valley is the internet.

Here are some data points:

Entire companies like Automattic, the company behind WordPress, are being built with no permanent offices. I have a friend living in Alpine, TX who works for them. You can see the location of

Entire companies like Automattic, the company behind WordPress, are being built with no permanent offices. I have a friend living in Alpine, TX who works for them. You can see the location of Alpine. Perhaps the opposite of a tech hub.

TechStars and YCombinator are both operating "virtual" tech accelerators over the internet.

Every company in the program at RealCo spans multiple geographies. Every single one. That caused us to become distributed as well.

Many young people are growing knowing only a world with the internet. They are Digital Citizens first, and that is how they will build companies. Flipmass is just such a startup that offices a few doors down from me.

The biggest tech innovation this decade is blockchain, which was created without Silicon Valley VCs and well outside of the valley.

Does this mean Silicon Valley is dying? Far from it. I am bullish on Silicon Valley. There is no better place to build and scale a startup regarding talent and resources. However, the shifts we are seeing makes it easier by the day to make great companies anywhere.

]]>The Rooney Rule is a National Football League policy that requires league teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule)

]]>https://girdley.com/a-tech-rooney-rule/7b1ea7c6-8baf-499a-9b63-34090c2064a8Mon, 07 Aug 2017 16:00:00 GMTThe Rooney Rule is a National Football League policy that requires league teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior football operation jobs. (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooney_Rule)

I've seen many tech jobs filled when people of color or women were never even considered. If we're serious about diversity, let's fix it one company at a time by making consideration of a variety of candidates the norm.

From here on out, every time I hire I will interview at least one candidate who is not a white male. It's not perfect, but it's a start.

I understand this won't fix all the issues we have regarding diversity in this industry, but it's something I can do as an entrepreneur. Change can happen one job, life or person at a time. We just all have to make an effort.

]]>1) Blockchain is still really very early. It feels like IP/Internet protocols did in the mid-90s. Gopher, Telnet, Usenet and the WWW were all the rage with no clear winners. The most interesting tech was still to come like Javascript, web-MVC and P2P didn't exist.

1) Blockchain is still really very early. It feels like IP/Internet protocols did in the mid-90s. Gopher, Telnet, Usenet and the WWW were all the rage with no clear winners. The most interesting tech was still to come like Javascript, web-MVC and P2P didn't exist.

2) Like Internet 1.0, there's lots of glomming on of the world we know know onto this tech. In the mid-90s, newspapers decided just to put giant jpegs of their front pages on the web. Today feels much the same. The world that blockchain will impact hasn't become yet.

DAOs are a great example of a construct that the world just isn't ready to adopt:

The idea of the first DAO (The DAO) was to build a VC on top of Ethereum (ETH). It collapsed when security flaws were exploited in the ETH protocols.

3) I'll be shocked if there are not lots more hacks of people stealing from these new techs. I expect a wave of hacks like we saw in internet 1.0. The ethereum hard fork as a response to the DAO hack shows how it'll still going to be a problem in the future that'll require solid leadership to keep it being a mess:

4) Ethereum is strong because they seem to have very strong leadership. Smells like what Linus Torvalds is giving Linux. To illustrate their professionalism, this is the agenda for the regular Eth leadership team:

5) Smart money seems to be betting that there'll be tons of blockchain protocols eventually. I think this really makes sense. As we saw in Bitcoin (mostly a value store) vs Ethereum (programmable), there should be an explosion of specialized protocols.

Given Bitcoin (aka BTC) is designed to be deflationary, this is worrisome. People have incentives to sit on their BTC whereas a small, background inflation is good because it incentivizes people to put their money to work.

6) Given patterns, I'm not certain Ethereum (aka ETH) will be the end-state for blockchain. Yes, there are other apps and cryptocurrencies being built on it. But, what happens we we discover the world has changed and ETH isn't doing enough for us? There's certainly other people who think that, too. Check out Shift as an example which contends ETH is inherently flawed:

We won't really know until devs try to build stuff on the current state as to where the gaps are in the protocols.

7) ICOs suffer from the same problem as crowdfunding: great investments are rare and don't need dumb money. They've taken off because of classic mania behaviors combined with the lack of places for equity in ETH to go:

What's interesting about those applications on ETH is they're mostly attacking problems that are really hard to fix. Disrupt residential MLS or medical EMRs? Good luck on that.

I think this is consistent with my thesis that the world isn't ready for blockchain yet. Many are also societal problems and not actual customer problems.

8) ICOs/Tokens represent another case where people's immediate reaction is to glom the existing models onto that tech. People are doing these mini-IPOs using ICOs to raise money. Bajali (CEO of 21) thinks they're the future:

They do believe the protocol is where the money will be made. I tend to disagree with that as history has shown winning protocols are often free and applied tech is a great generator of wealth. This especially happens when a business enables people to do new things they couldn't before.

10) Where it will get interesting is in applications of blockchain that create new possibilities. Like Twitter has made everyone a journalist and publisher. Or, Square made every person a full-service retailer.

That's compared to fixing existing world problems that are a byproduct of existing systems or using blockchain just to reduce some costs in a system. Instead, the interesting opportunities are things that were just plain impossible prior to blockchain.

11) We may be getting close. There is a case that dApps (distributed apps for the blockchain) are just now reaching a tipping point that the entire ecosystem for making them is coming very soon:

I'm excited to see them come. I'm also looking forward to seeing today's primitive blockchain efforts a decade or two from now. Now if we can just figure out who will be the Pets.com sock puppet of Blockchain...

Comments and arguments welcomed below.

]]>We're investors in a startup called Easy Expunctions. They help people with old criminal items clear their records.

They're part of an evolution of tech where simple legal matters get done with the help of technology. Much like LegalZoom helped people file their own business documents and wills, Youssef and

We're investors in a startup called Easy Expunctions. They help people with old criminal items clear their records.

They're part of an evolution of tech where simple legal matters get done with the help of technology. Much like LegalZoom helped people file their own business documents and wills, Youssef and the team are working to help people clear their records.

Here's an explainer video of what they do:

Lots of good people have bad things in their distant past, so it's great to be able to help a startup helping them.

]]>As an investor on the hunt for startups that can someday be huge, I often feel overwhelmed by small ideas. Doing a startup has never been lower risk and lower cost but so many startups seem to pitch us ideas that are just small thinking.

As an investor on the hunt for startups that can someday be huge, I often feel overwhelmed by small ideas. Doing a startup has never been lower risk and lower cost but so many startups seem to pitch us ideas that are just small thinking.

SAAS for dry cleaners. (How much can you charge them? "Uh, I think $49 a month but they won't pay a nickel more!" How many dry cleaners are there in your city? "Uh.")

The "Find great beer deals tonight!" app. (For whom is this a big problem?)

These ideas that won't ever be big markets, aren't necessarily important to anyone or some combination thereof.

This feels all a side effect of the Lean Startup methodology. It tells founders to go interview customers and find out their problems. Then, propose solutions and validate those with interviews.

Then build and ship.

Voila! You have a business.

You can see the problem here? Customers knows their problems but they plain suck at imagining the future.

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” -- attributed to Henry Ford (but he didn't really say it.)

Thinking bigger requires imagination. Yes, you have to build something that will be very important to many people now or in the future.

But, if you want to change the world with a startup (and I think you should especially if you're going to invest the next 3-5 years of your life on it), then imagine a bigger future and try to build it.

]]>I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who make it really hard for you to help them. It has hurt some people as I and others don't try to do things for them any more.

Some of the common mistakes:

Disrespecting introductions. I've connected startups to other people and

I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who make it really hard for you to help them. It has hurt some people as I and others don't try to do things for them any more.

Some of the common mistakes:

Disrespecting introductions. I've connected startups to other people and then they treat the other person badly.

Misunderstanding motivations. I've seen founders expect the intro to be something it isn't or the intro to do something unreasonable.

Not being prompt. An intro is made and the receiving person takes weeks to respond. It's insulting.

Not making it easy for the other side. If someone is doing you a favor, don't expect them to drive across town to help you. And so on.

Asking for more right away. I've sent candidates to a startup only to have them respond with "Great! Can you send me xyz person next?" Uh, no.

Oh, and there's a last one: Not being gracious.

As last anecdote about that: I referred a candidate to the startup. They hired him. The startup sent me a nice ($100ish) thank you gift. Of all the 100s of referrals I've made in the last 12 months, that one has always made me smile. I knew the startup valued my help.

]]>The job of a CEO is a learned skill. Yet, most people do little to become a great CEO.

It’s one of life’s great ironies that the business leaders who most need professional development seem to work extremely hard to avoid it.

I sat in an on a mentoring session with a company today. A relatively straightforward question was asked.

Three mentors were present. You’d think the extreme case is that the startup would get three pieces of different advice. Nope. It was even more: two of the mentors even managed to contradict themselves mid-session.

So, five different opinions.

This phenomenon is called a number of names. Techstars calls it “Mentor Whiplash.” Founders get opposing viewpoints from source after source.

Weak founders bounce back and forth without ever picking a course. The company grinds to a halt because the founder is stuck in an infinite loop.

Strong founders take the contradictory advice in stride and use it to inform their own thoughts. When they’re pretty certain, they make a decision. Right or wrong, the company moves forward.